Simang: The Connector of a Fragmented Region
Li Yangang — WSET Diploma, philosophy background, owner of a tiny estate — is the only person in Shangri-La thinking about what 'the region' actually means.
The Connector
Section titled “The Connector”Li Yangang is not a typical winemaker.
He holds a WSET Diploma. He studied philosophy as an undergraduate. Before founding Simang, he ran Yanyun Wine Education. In 2017 he moved to Deqin and stayed. In a region where most winemakers spend only a few months a year on site, he chose to put down roots.
Simang itself is small. Thirty mu (about two hectares) of Chardonnay and ten mu of red varieties. Annual production: four to five thousand bottles of white, two thousand of red. The estate has no facility of its own yet; winemaking is done in Li Guojun’s “Snow Mountain Sanctuary” space, with the plan to build a standalone winery in the future.
But to evaluate Li only by tonnage and hectares is to miss the point.
Li Yangang is the connector of this region. In a fragmented terroir without even an industry association, where two estates can be hours apart by road, he is trying to do one specific thing: turn scattered individuals into a coherent whole.
”Six Thousand Mu, Very Complex”
Section titled “”Six Thousand Mu, Very Complex””Li is clear about Simang’s positioning: “Our goal is not to make a lot of wine. We do this because we want to make interesting wines, wines that reflect this land.”
Interesting. He uses the word more than once.
His parcels are scattered across Deqin (Adong, Hongpo, Xidang) from 2,000 to 2,800 meters. All rented and managed in-house. He emphasizes single parcels and terroir, each wine in a few hundred to a thousand or two bottles.
“Our small region is six thousand mu of vines, but it is extremely complex. Within this range you could replicate most of the world’s terroir types.” The line sounds like rhetoric until you remember the geography. The Hengduan Range’s vertical climate stacking means a 300-meter elevation difference along the same river corridor can create two distinct microclimates. He is not really exaggerating.
In 2023, Simang released its first Chardonnay vintage. A strategic pivot.
“Shangri-La’s whites will be more exciting than the reds. More attention-grabbing.” His conviction is firm. Costs are high (he admits “logically the cost is going to be expensive”), but he believes high-altitude Chardonnay is worth the price.
Greater Shangri-La
Section titled “Greater Shangri-La”Simang’s significance extends well past the estate.
Li runs a Greater Shangri-La Wine Region course series, covering a geography far wider than Yunnan’s Diqing Prefecture. His definition of Greater Shangri-La includes:
- Diqing Prefecture, Yunnan (Deqin, Shangri-La city, Weixi)
- Garzê Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan
- Aba Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture, Sichuan
- Yanjing, Tibet
The unifying geological frame is the Hengduan Mountains. The unifying cultural frame is the Kham Tibetan area. The unifying viticultural logic is high-altitude, low-latitude, village-level terroir.
The course has run in Beijing, Chengdu, and Shanghai. Official agencies have begun using the Greater Shangri-La Wine Region name, coined by Deqin County itself.
In a region with no formal appellation, no classification, no unified standard, Li is using education and curriculum to construct regional identity. This is unusual globally. The normal order is: appellation first (AOC, DO, AVA), then education and promotion. Li is doing it inverted: education first, certification later.
He is also pushing for a formal industry association. “A certificate. A seal.” Progress is slow. He says: “We have to be slow. We don’t have enough data.”
Fifteen Guests at a Time
Section titled “Fifteen Guests at a Time”Since 2019, Simang has been running region tours. By 2025, fifteen or sixteen tours have taken place.
The model is deliberate: small groups of no more than fifteen. Estate visits, vineyard walks, tasting, lectures. Itineraries pass through the core villages: Adong, Hongpo, Xidang. Partners include Baozhuang and Songtsam.
The timing matters: avoid July and August. “You can’t see the snow mountains then.” For Li, Meili Snow Mountain is not just scenery. It is part of the regional narrative. Without the snow peaks as backdrop, the trip is reduced.
Pricing is internal, about 20% of market rate. He is not running this for revenue. He is running it for the long-term brand value of education: students become customers, customers become disseminators.
He mentioned a useful detail: some of these region-tour participants come from universities and education institutions, but numbers have declined recently with the economic slowdown and the rising difficulty of recruiting education-tourism groups. The model is not yet commercially robust. He needs more diverse customer sources.
The Region’s Own Problems
Section titled “The Region’s Own Problems”Li does not avoid the weaknesses.
“Yunnan winemaking has a few problems. Ao Yun’s method is the key framework. But the locals, the local winemakers, haven’t seen the world.”
This is blunt but accurate. The Shangri-La winemaker pool with real international training and broad exposure is small enough to count on one hand. Ao Yun’s Maxence Dulou comes from a Bordeaux grand cru. Xiaoling has Sylvain Pitiot from Clos de Tart. Muxin’s Mou Chao trained at Clos de Tart and Clos des Fées in Burgundy, Jean-Louis Chave in the Northern Rhône, and Vérité in California. The remaining local winemakers are still in the experience-accumulation phase.
Simang has been through this curve too. For the first few years, an outside consultant. Only in 2023 did Li and his team start vinifying on their own. “We have completed the internal learning. I hope we can one day build a training center here, even a certification system.”
The vision is ambitious. The region needs it.
Slow as a Choice
Section titled “Slow as a Choice”Li uses the phrase manman lai (slowly does it) often.
He has not rushed to build the winery; they are still using Snow Mountain Sanctuary space. He has not rushed to expand. Ten mu of red varieties has not grown for years. He has not rushed brand promotion. Shanghai event appearances are roughly as frequent as Xiaoling’s: countable on one hand.
But the things he is doing (courses, association work, region tours, data accumulation) are foundation work. None of it converts to sales in one or two years. In ten years, it may have shaped the trajectory of the entire region.
“It takes time. We’re not in a hurry. But we need to build something sustainable, something that really represents Shangri-La, both in wine and in spirit.”
He said this in English. Spirit, in a region populated by Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and Catholic churches, carries a double meaning.
The Real Point of Simang
Section titled “The Real Point of Simang”Not that Simang makes the best wine in China. At its current scale and vine age, it does not get to make that claim.
The point is that in a region where every estate is busy making its own wine and selling its own wine, Li Yangang is the only person thinking about the word region.
Ao Yun thinks about its brand. Xiaoling thinks about its terroir. Both do this well. Both are individual stories.
Simang thinks about: how do all these individuals become a collective? A region with a curriculum, certificates, an association, a common standard?
In Burgundy, this took centuries. In Ningxia, the government did most of it for the estates. In Shangri-La, for now, it is one philosophy-trained, WSET-Diploma winemaker pushing.
Maybe that is why Simang’s label carries four pythons (simang means four pythons). What a python has is patience.
PLACEHOLDER:hero-simang at the top. PLACEHOLDER:portrait-li-yangang inside §1 — Li teaching one of his Greater Shangri-La courses. PLACEHOLDER:map-greater-shangri-la inside §3 — the four-prefecture region across Yunnan, Sichuan, and Tibet.